Several proposed new types of high explosive devices involve burning boron, or other light metals. (See U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/293,659) Magnesium and aluminum have low melting points about 920-930K, and are relatively easily ignited, whereas boron melts at 2350K, vaporizes at 4140K, and has a dry air ignition temperature of about 1950K. (See H. L. Besser and R. Strecker, “Overview of Boron Ducted Rocket Development During the Last Two Decades” in Combustion of Boron-Based Solid Propellants and Solid Fuels, edited by K. K. Kuo, and R. Pein, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1993, which is hereby incorporated by reference.) Boron also has a high heat of vaporization, 480-kJ/mol, or 10.6 kcal/g. Explosive initiation of a boron burn will probably require either the presence of a catalyst or some means of heating the boron to very high temperatures. Shocking boron particles with a high explosive detonation wave will not produce temperatures high enough to cause melting because boron is a relatively incompressible brittle substance with a bulk modulus of about 2.6 Mb. Although temperatures attained within the reaction zone of a detonating high explosive are high, about 3000-4000K depending on the explosive, they are maintained only for short intervals, of the order of hundreds of nanoseconds.